Sports

Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team, woke up on the floor of her apartment near Copenhagen, drenched in sweat and shaking.She had collapsed and couldn’t speak. An ambulance rushed to her.It was two years ago last month, and the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan. Female soccer players on the national team Popal helped create in 2007 were desperate to leave the country, fearing that the Taliban would kill them for playing the sport.Players were deluging Popal with requests for help, and she felt smothered by guilt. For more than 15 years, much of that period spent in exile, she had encouraged Afghan girls to participate in all areas of society, including sports, jobs and education.The message was everything the Taliban despised.“I feel r...

Brusdar Graterol, a right-handed reliever for the Los Angeles Dodgers, will always remember the day he saw his teammate Max Muncy sprinting straight toward one of the greatest moments of his life.Muncy was not attempting to beat out an infield single. And Graterol was not standing on the mound or in the Dodgers’ bullpen.It was April 24, and the moment came in Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The rest of the Dodgers were in Pittsburgh. Graterol stepped out of the bathroom, saw a man dashing down the hallway, and said to himself, “Oh my God, that’s Muncy over there! He’s going to have the baby right now!”Graterol was well aware of what was happening because he and his wife, Allison, were quite busy in their own hospital room, also on the second floor of Cedars-Sinai, following the b...

As a decorated college runner at Notre Dame and then at the University of Tennessee, Dylan Jacobs dabbled with a device that many of his teammates considered indispensable.But on those rare occasions when Jacobs succumbed to peer pressure and slapped a GPS watch around his wrist, he almost immediately remembered why he had resisted the temptation in the first place.“The runs just felt so much longer,” said Jacobs, 23, a three-time N.C.A.A. champion who recently turned pro. “That was one of my main problems with it. I wasn’t enjoying myself or looking around. Instead, I was kind of looking at the watch every quarter-mile to see how much longer I had left.”GPS watches — popular brands are Garmin, Suunto and Coros — come equipped with satellite technology and heart rate monitors to produce a ...

Shortly before the roster was due to be announced for the Spanish women’s first international soccer match since their World Cup victory, the Royal Spanish Football Federation postponed the event until further notice.It became clear why five minutes later, when Spain’s star players made public a list of demands for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federation, Spain’s soccer governing body.The events came the same day as a restraining order was granted against Luis Rubiales, the former head of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, the country’s governing body. Mr. Rubiales, who appeared in court Friday on charges of sexual assault against a star forward, Jennifer Hermoso, whom he forcibly kissed after the team won the World Cup in August, must stay 200 meters, or more than 650 feet, a...

They are from different parts of the world. They have different backgrounds and fill different roles on a pitching staff. They are both 29 and have pitched for four different major league organizations. Each has been traded twice and waived once.Against all odds, and across many miles, the right-handed pitchers Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López keep finding each other.In fact, in their professional careers, they have almost never been apart.“I thought it was kind of a peculiar stat,” said Cleveland’s Terry Francona, the latest manager to oversee a pitching staff that includes Giolito, a starter, and López, a reliever.Peculiar is one word for an odyssey that became even odder as the pair bounced to three different teams this summer.“Very unique, that’s for sure,” Giolito said. “I don’t know ...

There are more Formula 1 races than ever, and next season there will be even more, with 24 races, the most in the sport’s history.This year’s Formula 1 schedule, at 23 events, should have set the record, but the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was canceled because of the extreme rainfall that devastated the region. That event, at the Imola circuit in Italy, will return on May 19, 2024, and will be the seventh race of the year.Also returning to the calendar is the Chinese Grand Prix, which was last held at the Shanghai International Circuit in 2019. Formula 1 and the Chinese race’s promoter have a contract through 2025, and next year’s Grand Prix will be on April 21, the season’s fifth race.“Now there’s a lot of people really into racing and Formula 1 who can’t wait to go back there — also myself...

Players in Spain’s women’s soccer league have called off a strike that delayed the opening of the season after reaching an agreement with the league over minimum salaries, a rare moment of harmony in what has been an acrimonious period in Spanish soccer.The agreement, confirmed early Thursday, would raise the minimum salary for players in the league to 21,000 euros, or about $22,500, from 16,000 euros this season, a significant increase but still far short of what their male counterparts make.The minimum is scheduled to rise to €23,500 for the 2025-2026 season, with the potential for an even higher benchmark “if enough profits are obtained from commercial assets,” such as sponsorship, according to a statement from the unions representing the players.Spanish soccer is in the midst of a turb...

Night had fallen, spirits were moving and the songwriting baseball coach was rounding third base and headed for home. Twice in the autumn of 2020, doctors had advised a gravely ill Tim Flannery to say goodbye to his family. Both times, he declined to surrender.The right arm that sent home so many San Francisco base runners during the Giants’ three World Series titles from 2010 to 2014 waved away a final coda.The road back from the brink was as unlikely as the man himself. An infielder turned popular coach, Flannery was always something more. A musician who carried a guitar with him on the road, and a surfer who posed with a board on one of his trading cards, he could not help but stand out in the strait-laced world of Major League Baseball.Having transitioned fully into philanthropy and so...

Las Vegas Raiders at Buffalo Bills, 1 p.m., CBSLine: Bills -9.5 | Total: 47Four careless turnovers from Josh Allen doomed the Bills (0-1) against the Jets’ formidable defense. He can rebound against the Raiders (1-0), who face uncertainty over the playing status of two key contributors. Defensive lineman Chandler Jones was away from the team last week amid a conflict with staff that trickled out in a since-deleted social media rant, and it is unclear if he will play this week. The team’s No. 2 receiver, Jakobi Meyers, entered the concussion protocol after he was leveled on the game-ending drive against the Broncos and could be out this Sunday. If Allen is more precise and varies his downfield looks to Stefon Diggs, the Bills could run away with this one. Pick: Bills -9.5Los Angeles Charger...

Spain should not have been in contention to win the World Cup. It did not make any sense. Its finest players spent most of the last year on strike. A dozen of them were not invited to the tournament as a consequence. Those that are here are part of a squad held together by an uneasy truce, working under a coach who can count on the loyalty — at best — of a relatively small fraction of his team. These are not the circumstances in which success is forged. And yet, and yet: Spain is champion of the world, testament to an enduring truth of soccer, of sports. Talent can conquer absolutely anything. It can even take a team, one that had prepared for this World Cup in arguably the worst possible way, to the biggest game of all, the grandest stage, and then sweep it past England, the European c...